


And Necessary

by Anonymous



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Aftermath, Devotion, M/M, Post-Ten Years Later Arc (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Verse (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 13:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22496959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Tsuna's reunion with everyone has its awkward and also violent side. Gokudera figures he ought to let the boss take a few hits this once.
Relationships: Gokudera Hayato/Sawada Tsunayoshi
Kudos: 31
Collections: 31 Days 2020, anonymous





	And Necessary

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment.
> 
> From "Variations on the Word Sleep" by Margaret Atwood.

  


He was walking. More than even breathing, than sitting up and pushing the lid of his coffin aside - Tsuna was on his feet, stiffly walking through the forest to meet them halfway.

As soon as Gokudera saw him, his devastated joy locked his joints and forced him to a halt. Just as well. He had been thinking, as he ran to the clearing where the coffin had been placed, that he really ought to be at the back of the procession. Everybody else would ... have more things to communicate than he did.

"Everyone!" Tsuna cried out as he saw them, putting on speed.

Yamamoto's headbutt hit him with that much more force as a result, so that he was knocked right off his feet. Yamamoto had practically folded himself in half to land the hit, and straightened with a laugh to haul Tsuna back up.

"Those poor kids! What were you thinking?" Haru howled, smacking Tsuna over the ear before he was properly on his feet, and then collapsed on him in a hug. "How could you bring them here?"

Everyone else decided that the recriminations and welcomes might as well take place on the ground. Lambo headbutted Tsuna too, tragical in his usual way about having been so kept out of the loop that he hadn't received word about Tsuna's sham death, and then Yamamoto for initiating the headbutting, since it was a signature Bovino move.

Gokudera resisted the urge to join in with all his might - to touch any part of Tsuna that could be touched - and harried them all into the base after a little while.

He allowed himself to say, in greeting, the title he'd loved to bestow for so long. It was also a test, to see how natural or unnatural _Tenth_ might feel on his tongue.

*

The ideal was a cross between having a barracks and having a home. The ideal was a cross between rebellion - the blaze that fed a young soul - and acceptance - a warmth that could be felt from the outside too and that was existence's greatest possible relief.

Gokudera had needed to put shape to his ideals when Tsuna had named him right hand. A whole ritual - a masked party-cum-siege when the Vongola Tenth turned twenty. Stroke of midnight, and sleep-addled Tsuna had had to find, protect, name, and be protected by his guardians - all to name the next consigliere. Tsuna had complained that they could have asked him in the morning and he'd have given the same answer as he had just got from the ritual.

So, Gokudera had known his title hadn't truly been earned. In the face of Tsuna's honest bewilderment about the ordeal Gokudera naturally hadn't been capable of turning it down, but it had meant that he'd throttled _some_ of his gut instincts and sat down to think things through for once.

Being vital to the whole hulking machine of the Vongola - of any crime family - was important to him as it had been from the time his understanding of the world began to form. It was like a safety net. The part of him that flipped the bird at safety nets cherished the friends and allies he'd accrued. His feelings were something of a problem when the Tenth had many ideas that ran contrary to the practices of the families; the situation was kind of tough when he still wasn't the best about interacting with people, though he tried.

With all that acknowledged ... it could still, truly work. Sitting on his bed in the dark, cracking his knuckles, Gokudera had nodded to himself. His goals, the Tenth's goals, and his friends' needs and wants could be fairly brought together. Of course he would have to work at it, but what it came down to was that it was a good thing that he was the mafia brat around here. He could take care of the rules and the ruthlessness that the others were working their way up to or avoiding. It would give him a vital place, and give them a measure of peace.

Any plan Tsuna might want to accomplish that others would balk at - he wouldn't.

*

Or Tsuna could go to Irie Shoichi instead, who wasn't his worst enemy after all. (Funny how often that happened with Tsuna.) And Hibari!

*

"Hibari?" Gokudera half-yelled. "Honestly! The bastard didn't so much as bother to stick around to say 'welcome back to the land of the living, boss'!"

He handed Tsuna a mug of hot chocolate - well aware that Tsuna still didn't like coffee much, despite drinking it lately to appear more mature. They were the only two in the kitchen, their friends having gone to check on everyone else they knew, and Tsuna needing a little more time to recover from the stasis than the rest of them. He had been in it a few days longer, after all; in his coffin.

Tsuna folded his hands around the mug like he needed the warmth. "You and I both know that that bird was flying along with us in the forest for a reason." His smile gave up the ghost. "Gokudera... I... I don't know that I can say I'm sorry. I'm so relieved it worked, something had to be done ... but you had to think I was dead for longer than the rest, and that's... No, I _am_ sorry. It's just ... if the apology doesn't mean much to you, that is understandable. It's not enough."

"You made me useless." It was easy to complain about. Everything was easy, when he could see Tsuna sitting upright right next to him at the kitchen table. "You ignored my oath, Tenth, that I would advise you on any path you wished to take. So you'd better appreciate that drink."

A blink at the teasing tone, and then Tsuna took a gulp of hot chocolate so fast it nearly spilled, his eyes fixed on Gokudera.

"But, your whole crazy plan, the basis of it... Your love for us saved the world. You knew that even when we were dumbass kids, it could do that."

Gokudera's pride and pleasure stirred in ways he was supposed to have overcome, the follies of youth. Whatever. As if the day wasn't weird enough to excuse everything from dropping to his knees and weeping yet again to laughing his head off. "Your love for me," he added. "I was first to be brought over, huh?"

He nudged Tsuna with an arm, then saw that he'd startled Tsuna out of staring at his smile. The man was out to take all the steadiness out of Gokudera's heartbeat today, when he was trying to be a sturdy presence while everyone else grappled with everything that had been revealed.

"Well, I couldn't put young Gokudera through too much right away. He would have gone nuts looking for ten-years-younger Tsuna, so..." Now Tsuna's gaze rested on the bags under Gokudera's eyes. "And you were the first to know. So you definitely had to be the first one taken, so you wouldn't have to think I was dead too long. Leaving you with that hurt..."

Tsuna half-stood and dragged his chair close, then clasped Gokudera's arm and gave him a searching look. Gokudera aggressively wrapped his arm around Tsuna's shoulders, feeling the answering sigh of satisfaction and relief as they settled against each other. Of course it had been too long. Days and nights.

"I have to make calls and organise some things, and so do you," Gokudera said, just this side of an instruction, even as he stroked a thumb back and forth across Tsuna's skin. Warm, soft. "You _want_ to, too, there's your mom and dad and finding wherever they went to hide. But Tenth, you should rest, and when you do...?"

*

It had started before Tsuna had got gunned down on his own secret orders. Lying in bed together, curled close. It was better this time, with no more anxiety or mystery about it. With something entirely new about it. Gokudera spread his hand over the rise and fall of Tsuna's breathing.

"I'd still do anything," Gokudera told him. "Whatever you come up with in future, Tenth, I will help with it! Remember that." 

They both knew it was untrue. He wouldn't have been able to stand a plan like the one Tsuna and those other two had taken to its conclusion.

Gokudera was happy enough with that, though. He would strive for his own ideal of being a necessary cog, for sure, but since they'd met he had been devoted to Tsuna's ideal of wanting things like safety on behalf of others, devoted with his whole longing heart; that it had saved the world could only strengthen that.

Though he'd suffered under a great lie, and something like a betrayal ... the ideal, the permanent back-of-brain hope, of being wanted was fulfilled such that he didn't know if he'd be able to bring himself to leave this bed in the morning.

Tsuna peeled off the hand Gokudera had over his ribcage and kissed the fingers, then put it back where he'd been.

"You can save your apologies for the others, Tenth. Promise," Gokudera said. The gesture had had something of that air to it.

"Um. OK." Tsuna's hand clenched over his, an urgent spasm of feeling that carried over to his voice. "So then ... this time isn't an apology..."

It didn't feel like one when Tsuna kissed his palm, his wrist. Definitely not when he turned in Gokudera's arms and dropped a testing kiss on his mouth. It felt like yet more promises of the impossible made possible.


End file.
